Week Four: Routines For All Day Long

Routines. Children thrive on them while parents cringe trying to create them. There are many ways to create them and I will show you only one possibility among many here today.

Before we begin, grab your Personal and Family Mission Statements, some paper and a pen or pencil. Clear yourself some space where you can have a few moments of peace to work. Then take a moment to pray. Ask God that he will help you in your work and lead you to what is best for your family in his mission.

The key for this week is Simplicity. God does not call us to be involved in every activity or perfect in every task. Keeping simplicity in mind helps us to weed through our “to do” list and focus on efficiency and a “job well done” as opposed to rushing constantly and attempting perfection.

I structure my routines this way and will be walking you through my process. Please sweet ladies, do not feel overwhelmed or inadequate. We are all doing the best we can and focusing on God and his mission in our lives and our families is what is most important (not who’s home is the cleanest).

I begin with writing out my Weekly Routine. I first include items I know will not move their date. For example: Church is always on Sunday and DH always has a meeting on Monday. These items I write on their specific days then in a second area titled, I write out the items that are done once a week but not always on the same day: grocery shopping, cleaning out the car, washing linens, etc.

Next comes a group of Routines: Morning, Afternoon and Evening. I first begin with Morning and Evening, writing up the routines for when we first get up and before we go to bed. For us this includes (not necessarily in this order):When we get up: Make bed, get dressed, wash face, brush teeth, do hair and makeup, tidy room, do devotional

From here I move to chores. This is when I may need to go back and add a few items to my Weekly Routine. I like to keep activities and chores separate when I write up my lists as I find it helps me focus better. I will first make a list of all the chores I would like to accomplish, then mark by them if I need to do them daily or weekly or even monthly (ie. sweeping may need to be done daily but mopping only weekly). The chores that are weekly, I immediately add to this section of my routines.

For daily chores, I consider the practicality of our home. For me, it makes sense to start a load of laundry during the morning, switch it over in the afternoon and fold it and put away in the evening (you can see I just broke a chore into chunks throughout my day, this helps me stay on task and motivated personally). Consider how your family functions when deciding which chores should be done throughout your day.

For the monthly chores, I break them down into chunks as best I can and add chunks to my weekly routines. I’ll mention more on this later.

I am not homeschooling yet, but if I was, I would now begin thinking about morning, afternoon and evening routines for school. The same for work (I’m blessed that most of my work or writing can be done in the evening so I only have that to add). Take a few moments here, again considering if certain children do better with certain subjects in the morning versus the afternoon and if you feel more productive getting work done in the morning versus the evening.

Lastly, similar to when we were working on our weekly routines, is our “we can’t change it” parts of our day. Breakfast always comes in the morning, dinner always the evening, etc. Write these out quickly for your reference.

Now we structure. Begin writing out your Morning Routines beginning with your When I Get Out of Bed routine and flowing through your day. Mine looks like this roughly:

When I get out of bed routineMake breakfastEat breakfastClean up kitchenStart laundryOther morning chores (sweeping, cat, cleaning one room task)

Do the same for each the Afternoon Routine and the Evening Routines.

You might notice that I listed “cleaning one room task”. I like to clean one room each day of the week and deep clean one room weekly. Since it would be overwhelming for me to try to do the deep clean all in one day, I break it up into manageable pieces to do throughout the week. I structure my monthly maintenance tasks the same way (cleaning gutters, flipping mattresses, washing pillows etc).

Once you have your basic Daily Routine structured, you can begin to work it around your weekly routines. Each day is different, be flexible. It’s not important that you get every task done. Having a goal and working towards it is what counts.

As we wrap up, be sure to note on your Weekly structure time to spend with your hubby, time to take care of yourself, time for family meetings, budget meetings and whatever else may be important to your family. Be specific when making your Routines. Having it on paper for you to look over regularly is far more helpful than trying to rely on memory.

I hope you have found this helpful and blessings in your week ahead ladies!

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3 thoughts on “Week Four: Routines For All Day Long”

I really need to get back into a routine. We always start the homeschool year off well organized and routined, but by now it is a free for all with clutter abounding. Thank you for these suggestions, I am going to work on a routine over summer and hopefully be able to stick to it all year this time!